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Trump’s USAID cuts hobble earthquake response in Myanmar

(NYT) — China, Russia and India have dispatched emergency teams and supplies to earthquake-ravaged Myanmar. So have Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.

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The United States has sent nothing.

Even as President Donald Trump was dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, he said American help was on its way to Myanmar, where a 7.7 magnitude earthquake ripped through the country’s heavily populated center Friday. More than 1,700 people were killed, according to Myanmar’s military government, with the death toll expected to climb.

But a three-person USAID assessment team is not expected to arrive until Wednesday, people with knowledge of the deployment efforts said. The overall U.S. response has been slower than under normal circumstances, people who have worked on earlier disaster relief efforts as well as on aid to Myanmar said.

Chinese search-and-rescue teams are already on the ground in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city and one of the places most deeply affected. China has pledged $14 million for Myanmar quake relief.

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced that the United States would provide up to $2 million in aid, dispersed through humanitarian groups based in Myanmar. But many of the systems needed to funnel U.S. aid to Myanmar have been shattered.

On Friday, as some employees in Washington in USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance were preparing a response to the earthquake, they received agencywide layoff emails.

Trump threatens bombing if Iran does not make nuclear deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program.

In Trump’s first remarks since Iran rejected direct negotiations with Washington last week, he told NBC News that U.S. and Iranian officials were talking, but did not elaborate.

“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Trump said in a telephone interview. “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”

“There’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago,” he added.

Iran sent a response through Oman to a letter from Trump urging Tehran to reach a new nuclear deal, saying its policy was to not engage in direct negotiations with the United States while under its maximum pressure campaign and military threats, Tehran’s foreign minister was quoted as saying on Thursday.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated the policy on Sunday. “Direct negotiations (with the U.S.) have been rejected, but Iran has always been involved in indirect negotiations, and now too, the Supreme Leader has emphasized that indirect negotiations can still continue,” he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In the NBC interview, Trump also threatened so-called secondary tariffs, which affect buyers of a country’s goods, on both Russia and Iran. He signed an executive order last week authorizing such tariffs on buyers of Venezuelan oil.